The Gaming Den

ok, question about the pumpkin king's pumpkin bomb ability... is there any mechanical reason why one couldn't just use an actual pumpkin that the ability infuses with energy, rather than conjuring one? I ask because a Lurker/Pumpkin King that throws actual pumpkins could use said pumpkins to both deliver damage and swarms by throwing pumpkins infested with undead bee swarms. Which is just too cool to pass up...


also, I'm assuming there's no really balance reason for Magic Jar to require gems, and that allowing characters to use anything thematically appropriate is fine. ie: a pumpkin king could theoretically use small gourds or even pumpkin seeds?

Mmm....well, undead bees live in obsidian hives, so thats right out. Plus, I think trying to combine a pumpkin attack with a swarm summoning is kinda cheesy.

As to magic jar, its mostly a symbolism reason on the gem thing. In general, you want it to be valuable so that people feel bad when its broken and PCs consider using dispel or something rather than outright smashing it ASAP. Other than that, it does kinda hurt PCs when they can't use player knowledge and say say "hey, we have a Magic Jar wizard around! Let's smash magic gems we find and stop that fvcker!" If a Jar could be any object, you'd never guess the right thing to smash.

What if you had the jar pour out acrid, black smoke or something cool like that? That way you still know which item does it, and you can still have cool things like pumpkins as Magic Jars.

Just have it glow with an unholy radiance.

actually I wasn't thinking of the bees living in pumpkins, rather the lurker orders 'em into said pumpkin and then chucks it at his opponents.

As to the magic jar... it's kinda difficult to guess wrong when your warlock detects magic...

1. By the RAW, Swarms take up a much larger space than a pumpkin...that being said, why would you want them to enter a pumpkin radiating (or soon to be radiating) destructive power? Sounds like a way to get some dead undead bees.

2. Detect Magic takes at least three turns to even have a chance of finding the right thing (to get a check to find all the necromacy auras). Then you'd get to decide if the Magic Jar is items radiating aurs at the wizard's caster level like:
-one of the bottles at his belt(potions of False Life).
-his staff (Heightened Enervation staff)
-his robe (Robe of bones)

Then you have to hope he wasn't an evil genius who decided to cast Misdirection on his Magic Jar item.

Basically, its far easier for your gameworld if certain magics work in a certain way. I dont' really care if all soul magics use gems or bottles or little ornate lacquered boxes or paintings or whatever. Make it consistant and you have a setting.

However, soul pumpkins do seem neat. Maybe it would have to be more obvious, like the pumpkin is actually cut by the spell to resemble the soul inside with light colored by a persons soul (red for CE/white for LG, for example) so that people know what is going on.

Basically, flavor text is interchangeable as long as the game effects are the same.

1a)Swarms, especially bee swarms, can compress down pretty damn small. 1b)there are soming fucking huge pumpkins out there. 1c)One could conceivably infest a bunch of pumpkins with a single swarm, but then we get into restating swarms. Also, it's unholy energy, but whatever... same thing, really, and I'm really just playing devil's advocate here I think... idea dropped.

2) that idea should work well, the recepticle being shaped by the spell in some way that denotes it as holding a soul... hell, one of the spheres uses chunks of ice for recepticles...

I've never been entirely happy with either moral option in here, and I recently came up with a third that I like a lot more, tell me what you think.

Moral Option 3: The Pitiable Hunger

A third moral option for undead and negative energy is to have it be hungry, cold, frightful, but ultimately unaligned, and most sorrowful of all, lonely, energy. When a skeleton goes uncommanded, it immediately seeks out the nearest form of life. It wishes not to devour it, but to find companionship, and fill the void that fuels it. Unfortunately, a skeleton is mindless and is as likely to accidentally claw the being to death in it's cold embrace as an ignorant three year old is to accidentally squeeze the life out of a beloved pet. And as the skeleton senses the lifeforce drain out of this being, the glowing pinprick eyes droop, and a deep sense of sorrow and incomprehension issues forth. It is frightening to the common folk who know not what has happened, but it is heartwrenching to the student of necromancy that knows the skeleton was just trying to fill the void of it's unsoul.

This model of morality is most suited to games with mature participants who are willing to consider the idea that the undead deserve not hatred, animosity or wrath, but pity, caring, and tolerance. More than this, it is most appropriate for games that accept the idea that negative energy and undead, coming as they do from the Plane of Negative Energy, are as natural as positive energy and the living.

Implications
Revanents: In games using the Pitiable Hunger morlaity, the revanent desires to replace it's negative fuel with that of life, but it likely knows it cannot. As such, revanents are likely either stoic, self-sacrificing figures that drive your heart to railing against the cruel multiverse, or manic things, driven mad by the refusal of life.

Skeletons and Zombies: In this campaign model, skeletons and zombies are not figures of comedy and farce, but rather at once figures of horror and pity. An uncontrolled mindless undead will seek out life and attempt to "befriend" it. It will attempt to fill the void of negative energy fueling it with true life, and may, unwittingly, kill the thing it desires to be like. Another implication of this model is that a kind-hearted necromancer who cares for his undead might create a garden with which to reward his mindless undead, as the skeltons could bask in the life force of a thousand plants and not kill their object of desire.

Vampires: As with the crawling darkness option, Vampire afflicted by the Pitiable Hunger are tragic figures that are driven by a hunger for life and light. Unlike revanents, however, Vampires can actually consume lifeforce. Conceivably, a vampire that devours enough life force to equal his max hitpoints in temporary hp could return to life. If the dm wants to be nice to his blood sucking npcs, that is... Under this option necromancers could hold vampires under control by simply controlling how much lifeforce the vampire can consume. Truly cruel necromasters might find vampires upon the verge of transanimation and enslave them, locking their metabolism when they need only one more temporary hit point.

Energons: Under the Pitiable Hunger moral option, Xeg-yi are probably just as pitiable as skeletons. For while they are not mindless, they are alien and do not understand what the mortal life truly is.

Spells:
Animate Dead: If Negative energy creates a hunger for life that can never be satisfied without the murder of supposedly innocent bystanders, then purposefully creating these creatures is evil as it inflicts undue suffering upon a being, even if the being is mindless. Create Undead and Create Greater Undead are likewise evil.

I don't mean to be rude, but that option strikes me as incredibly Emo.

The Intelligent undead, yes, but I think the unintelligent undead it turns into very strange hug-monsters.

Which is awesome.

Yeah, I do have to admit the death by hugs thing is pretty cool.

I love the "is it can it be *plural noun* tiem now pleez" meme; aside from the term "internets" it's the only one I'll use in real life.

I'm actually tempted to put them into a game. They'll be right up there with the hugz-tiem Hamatula (in 2Ed, barbed devils had the "hug" special attack).

[FLASH=180,200,true,transparent]http://lb.lyricsdownload.com/2/fla/53.s ... da=1109760[/FLASH]

Zombie: I wanna go hoooooome.
TGD: We weep for yoooooooou.

Prak, that model does not generate Liches at all. They are super intelligent, they transform themselves voluntarily, and they don't actually have to do anything to stay alive once they transform.

"Beware ye who would undertake the dark arts of Lichcraft, for you will be kind of uncomfortable and totally emo for all eternity!"

-Username17

I'm kind of digging this idea, too. Let's have liches be victims of heartbreak and betrayal who strive to live forever to win back their loves or something. When the object of their obsession finally dies, they switch to some other poor, living woman to woo.

I can just see the lich with his secret chest full of bad poetry and sketches, his walls of stone on the Astral Plane covered with portraits of the women he's loved and lost, that kind of thing.

It'd make liches pathetic stalkers, which is a weird enough spin for dudes who are super-smart yet willing to become undead.

Damn. Kind of like the Internet. Shit.

Sounds like Strahd von Zarovich.

This is truly an excellent article. I just have one comment atm:

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1148514254[/unixtime]]Tome of Necromancy

...
Implications:

...
Skeletons: If Negative Energy is inherently Evil, Skeletons must be as well. That means that they actually do Evil things. An uncontrolled skeleton will find the nearest source of life and start ripping it to pieces. A skeleton does not need to be commanded to attack, but to stop tearing up your vegetable garden (assuming even that it had not already found a more vigorous source of life such as the family dog). A commanded skeleton is a vicious, unthinking killer on a chain – not an inert construct awaiting commands.
...

It is possible for an unintelligent undead to be both neutral and be a vicious unthinking killers. As you said, they are not moral agents. What if they saw life and living things as a predator saw it's prey or a wolf pack sees a rival pack? A rabid dog, a cat playing with a mouse, and a tiger on the hunt may all seem like evil demons to their victims.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1188064389[/unixtime]]Prak, that model does not generate Liches at all. They are super intelligent, they transform themselves voluntarily, and they don't actually have to do anything to stay alive once they transform.

"Beware ye who would undertake the dark arts of Lichcraft, for you will be kind of uncomfortable and totally emo for all eternity!"

-Username17

frank, one of the options you put in the tome affects vampires in a perversely contrary fashion, why can't there be something that really doesn't affect liches at all? If one discards their *whatever*, they will not be the same as one who has had their *whatever* taken away, thus liches, who discard their positive energy to embrace negative energy, ostensibly understanding that they will always be hungry for that positive energy (a craving for something they obviously disdain in the first place) don't care.

Say, for example, that by becoming a eunich I could become powerful, maybe only eunichs get elected president or something, whatever. If I decide to castrate myself to become president, I won't be the same as some poor bastard who was castrated against his will. He will be sad and pathetic and always desire to regain his "manhood", while I will be quite happy being president, doing presidential stuff and if I really desire to still be able to have "normal heterosexual penetrative" sex, I will understand that the closest I can get is a strap on and thats one of the intended uses for that sort of thing... The other guy cries himself to sleep at night knowing he will not wake up to morning wood, I am sitting behind a big mahogany desk getting paid millions to sit around with my thumb up my ass and do very little.

was that at all comprehendable? or did I put it weird?

I liked you explanation. Too bad Mr.Bush can still breed.

Also, your option makes an explanation for the entire undead concept being used in Pirates of the Caribbean. Especially Captain Squidface of The Flying Dutchman from 2 & 3.

the_taken at [unixtime wrote:1188076807[/unixtime]]I liked you explanation. Too bad Mr.Bush can still breed.

fortunately I think he's figured out to not breed anymore anyway...

Also, your option makes an explanation for the entire undead concept being used in Pirates of the Caribbean. Especially Captain Squidface of The Flying Dutchman from 2 & 3.

hadn't thought of that, but yeah, it works.

I like your options, Prak. This is why I've joined forums for years; to view developing opinions, at times even contrasting, for the improvement of written material.
A group effort will always be stronger than one working alone.

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1188272008[/unixtime]]I like your options, Prak. This is why I've joined forums for years; to view developing opinions, at times even contrasting, for the improvement of written material.
A group effort will always be stronger than one working alone.

thanks, and your right, thats why I plan on helping out with the future tome stuff, assuming it becomes a boards project

Prak_Anima at [unixtime wrote:1188326639[/unixtime]]

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1188272008[/unixtime]]I like your options, Prak. This is why I've joined forums for years; to view developing opinions, at times even contrasting, for the improvement of written material.
A group effort will always be stronger than one working alone.

thanks, and your right, thats why I plan on helping out with the future tome stuff, assuming it becomes a boards project

Same here, and that's why I asked Frank to post drafts; though, since there's still the possibility of them finishing stuff themselves, I'm not saying much for now. Ah, I agree including in the part of "I like your option" (though I do like "Playing with Fire" too).

Prak_Anima at [unixtime wrote:1188076261[/unixtime]]
frank, one of the options you put in the tome affects vampires in a perversely contrary fashion, why can't there be something that really doesn't affect liches at all? If one discards their *whatever*, they will not be the same as one who has had their *whatever* taken away, thus liches, who discard their positive energy to embrace negative energy, ostensibly understanding that they will always be hungry for that positive energy (a craving for something they obviously disdain in the first place) don't care.

Say, for example, that by becoming a eunich I could become powerful, maybe only eunichs get elected president or something, whatever. If I decide to castrate myself to become president, I won't be the same as some poor bastard who was castrated against his will. He will be sad and pathetic and always desire to regain his "manhood", while I will be quite happy being president, doing presidential stuff and if I really desire to still be able to have "normal heterosexual penetrative" sex, I will understand that the closest I can get is a strap on and thats one of the intended uses for that sort of thing... The other guy cries himself to sleep at night knowing he will not wake up to morning wood, I am sitting behind a big mahogany desk getting paid millions to sit around with my thumb up my ass and do very little.

Well, this isn't exactly the way it has to work for undead. Lichdom can be something that you are "forced" into, not necessarily by someone physically turning you into a lich, but by the ever nearing inevitability of death by old age.

This isn't necessarily to say that you want to become some rotting filthy undead horror, but it may be better than the alternative. In this case, I could definitely see emo liches who miss the good old days and remember what it's like to be alive.

is this really that emo? cause I don't see it... but then again, I despise emo and at once apparetnly write some pretty emo stuff... maybe people need to remember that emo has whining in the corner and goth has meloncholy. Because I really see the stuff I write as more meloncholy and less emo...